How to Troll an Impeachment

I usually avoid "but her emails" jokes these days because honesty compels me to acknowledge that nothing disastrous has happened during the Trump presidency.  And while he has led us close to disaster many time, I am confident that he will continue to pull back in the end for fear of offending his base.

But I do keep making "but her emails" jokes whenever it turns out (predictably) that Trump is even worse at cyber security than Hillary.  

You may recall that Hillary's offense in sending State Department messages on a private server was two-fold.  Not using a properly secured device made her vulnerable to hacking by hostile intelligence services.  And not using her official server allowed her to evade disclosure laws.  

Conor Friedersdorf pointed out the absurdity of making this grounds to vote for Trump:

Absurdly, many seem to have convinced themselves that Trump, who won’t release his tax returns, as every presidential candidate has for decades, will be better on transparency; that a man whose finances we don’t even know, who used his charitable foundation to illegally funnel money to an attorney general investigating him for fraud, will be better on conflicts of interest; that an erratic man who blurts all manner of things out on Twitter and has shady ties to Vladimir Putin will somehow be a more trustworthy guardian of classified information.

Fast forward to a Washington Post article on Donald Trump's careless electronic security practices.  

Donald Trump regularly communicated with Rudy Giuliani on an unsecured cell phone, vulnerable to foreign hacks.  If the Russians did hack in (the article warns), they could use the information to fine-tune their propaganda strategy and manipulate Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, steering him to who-knows-what crazies.  He also gave out his private cell number to foreign leaders and others, and continues to make unsecured cell calls.

That addresses the issue of electronic security.  What of disclosure laws?

John F. Kelly, then White House chief of staff, and intelligence officials made a concerted attempt in 2017 to get Trump to use secure White House lines, even after the president had retreated to the residence in the evenings, officials said. But when Trump realized that this enabled Kelly to compile daily logs of his calls, and the identities of those he was speaking to, Trump became annoyed and reverted to using his cellphone, officials said. “He was totally paranoid that everyone knew who he was talking to,” a former senior administration official said.

Of course, I am not suggesting that Congress impeach based solely on a newspaper story.  But let them investigate and find out the full extent of Donald Trump's lax electronic security habits and evasion of disclosure laws.  And then draw up a third article of impeachment designed to be as trollish as possible.

Describe all Trump's lax uses of electronic security, especially his private cell phone, and his evasions of public records laws.  Painstakingly explain all the statutes these violated.  Compare them with Hillary's offenses and explain why they are so much worse.  Quote as many speeches, investigations, reports, and other comments for the record, from Trump and other Republicans, explaining why these are the most heinous crimes ever committed by and candidate in the history of our Republic, and why Hillary should definitely be in jail for them.  Remind everyone how many Trump rallies led chants of "Lock her up" for the use of a private server.

I realize there is a risk to all this.  It creates the impression that Hillary's cyber offenses really were as bad the Trumpkins suggest.  But this can be limited by emphasizing how much worse Trump's offenses are than the ones he saw as grounds for imprisoning his opponent. 

Of course I don't think this will persuade Republicans to impeach, let alone convict.  That that is not the point of trolling.  The point is just to make them squirm.